Actually, it won't be based on Doom 3. That engine is extremely old, and has already proven its limitations with two mediocre products (Doom 3, Quake 4) and one sorta good one (Prey).

It will likely be based on either:a) ETQW's tech (aka the "Megatexture" technology), developed primarily by Splash Damage.b) Wolfenstein's tech, developed primarily by Raven, which the world hasn't seen yet.c) Some new id-created tech.

Game property movies have been mostly ass, with some minor standouts valuable only as campy entertainment (the first Mortal Kombat movie). So, everyone who is skeptical is justified there.

Blizzard Film (the in-house team that makes their world-class cinematics) should be making a feature-length CG movie, I think (and others have said), but that would be a much greater financial risk (remember the Final Fantasy movie?) for Blizzard than simply licensing their world to professional filmmakers.

What is interesting to me, as a general Warcraft nerd and lore expert, is theorizing about what part of the saga they'll focus on. Whether they try to just pick one major conflict (First War, Second War) or try and do a general thing that covers everything from all the games, or try to do a movie that reflects how the world GENERALLY is, making it about no-names in the WC universe (that would also suck).

And wondering who is writing the script...whether people like Chris Metzen will have a role in the production of the film - as consultants, hopefully with some kind of creative control.

I hold a glimmer of hope that the pieces will come together and they'll make a movie worthy of one of the more compelling game universes there is, considering how much care has gone into making a compelling storyline so far.

It'd be fun to see some epic battles, maybe a showdown with Deathwing, or the Sundering Of The Earth, something really cool like that.

I'm scared it'll be Hollywood B-list in plate mail, riding horses and looking uncomfortable, like what the Morrowind movie seems to be.

Almost every SINGLE word of your post is comically false. I have seen few posts on this website that were less accurate than yours, and THAT'S saying something.

A simple Google Search is all that is needed to accurately refute your bullshit claims.

Seriously...there's this thing called "reality." Look into it.

Blizzard was bought out.

Actually, Blizzard has not been an independent company since 1995. They were originally funded by the Davidson Group, and were then acquired briefly by another company (I forget the name), and then by Havas Interactive, which was bought by Vivendi Universal.

Funnily enough, just a little bit before World of Warcraft was released.

Blizzard became a part of Vivendi many years before WoW was even announced, even before Warcraft III shipped.

The real Blizzard guys quit or were fired.

Wrong. Most of the founders are still there. Many of the people who made Starcraft and Warcraft made WoW.

The heads quit and started a new studio.

3 founders and one VP, who were largely responsible for the Diablo series, left and formed their own studio.

All the top guys who did warcraft and diablo were fired to get rid of their high salaries and they were replaced with fresh faced college kids at entry level salaries.

No, this is absolutely untrue. Look at the credits list for Warcraft I and the credits list for WoW. Many of the same people are still there...

They cancelled Starcraft:Ghost.

Can you prove this? There has been no official announcement that it has been cancelled, so we can only assume it's still in development. I've talked to people at Blizzard, and they confirm that it's still alive. Remember, Blizzard takes their sweet time making games. Just because you don't see new screenshots every other week doesn't mean it isn't in development.

What's a server cost? $1000 dollars?

You have no idea how expensive it is to run MMO servers. This isn't some throwaway box under a desk somewhere, moron. We're talking entire data centers dedicated to this game. WoW brings in millions of dollars a month in revenue, and it also spends millions of dollars a month.

No doubt it is making far more than it is spending on maintenance. But seriously - sit back and read and listen to people who know what the hell they're talking about before you spout a post full of such collossal ignorance.

Look, back before the Call of Duty days, EA had TWO Medal of Honor teams. Yes, two. One team did MoH: Allied Assault (for the PC) and another team did MoH: Frontline for the PS2.

So, from the BEGINNING, EA had a strategy of releasing two separate projects under the same general franchise, each different games, on different platforms. There was no AA console title, and no Frontline PC title.

When the team that did AA got fed up with EA's crap, they became Infinity Ward, and Call of Duty was born, published by Activision. CoD was PC only, just like MoH: AA.

Well, the team that did MoH: Frontline ALSO left EA and became Spark Unlimited, and THEY ALSO went to Activision to do a - you guessed it - console-only WW2 shooter, called Call of Duty: Finest Hour.

CoD on the PC got a lot of the attention, because, pound for pound, it was a better game. Finest Hour, however, was still a good game, and it sold really, really well. (Even merely good games sell 5+ million units in the console world, because there are 10x as many console gamers as PC gamers)

After CoD, IW went to work on CoD 2.

Things with Activision and Spark soured (remember, Spark sued Activision?) so they went looking for someone else to make another console-only CoD game. The team that was Gray Matter merged with another team from Treyarch, and they put out CoD 2: Big Red One.

CoD 2: BRO was a good game, but not a great game. (Seeing a pattern?) It was also only released for last-gen consoles (PS2, XBox, NGC). It didn't ship on the 360.

CoD 2 is the #1 selling XBox 360 game. It is the king of that console. It also sold really well on the PC. Things get confusing here, since they took their PC-only team and sim-shipped a PC and 360 title. Why?

I can only guess...the 360 and the PC are very similar dev environments. But the reason is probably because they wanted their best CoD developer (IW) to make a 360 launch title that would hit big. And they succeeded.

What's happening now - it looks like the CoD: BRO team is kickin' out another title, and they're calling it CoD 3.

Who knows what IW is working on. Probably a new IP, like people seem to suspect. But I wouldn't rule out CoD returning to the PC at some point in the future.

Anyone who reads the news and follows the industry can put the pieces together. You just have to pay attention to the details and know a bit of history.

CoD is not a franchise that's being "lost" to the consoles. Stop being so hysterical about the "death" of PC gaming. You're embarassing yourselves.

If publishers continue to deceive the ESRB, or the ESRB aren't thorough in their reviews, Congress and all the other Nanny State morons like Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton are going to say "see! see! This industry cannot regulate itself!"

And then BOOM. The legislation will come down like a ton of Bibles, er....BRICKS.

THIS IS BAD, FOLKS. Just more fuel for the zealots who want to regulate the game industry to hell and back.

Dude, drop the crack. The only reason the market isn't full of bug-ridden 3 hour $75 games is because we don't have unions, and HOPEFULLY never will.

The game industry is FULL of buggy POS games, you fool. It would be hard to get any worse. Unionization won't drop quality. Arguably, it would improve quality, because people who work more efficiently generally produce better work. People who are overworked don't.

Should unions come in and the per-hour price of game development triplicates for no good reason, it's the day that the game industry enters a crisis it's never seen since its inception.

Unions would not increase the cost of dev by 3x. That's an idiotic exaggeration.

If you look at the movie industry, a heavily unionized industry, you see that the price of movie production has skyrocketted for two reasons - a) "above the line" costs - i.e. stars and directors demanding ever more outrageous salaries, and b) massive marketing budgets. The actual production of movies (with the exception of CG-based movies) is getting cheaper and more efficient over the years.

In industries that were non-union that became unionized, costs generally STABILIZED or slightly increased, not gone up by 3x. Don't exaggerate to make your point.

Is that why publishers pay $$$ for press events, buy off previews (and reviews, but shhh, that can't be said!), base their decision on whether to make sequels on metacritic score (i.e. press review scores), and that's just the first two examples that came to mind?

OK, let me clarify. They do care about the press - because the press is a marketing vehicle. At E3, the press are wooed, but they play second fiddle to the REAL audience - the retail buyers. What I was trying to skewer was the bullshit notion that unrealistic release dates are the result of executives quoting the wrong dates to the press, and then suddenly feeling beholden to those dates. With regards to keeping their promises to the marketplace - publishers don't give a shit. However, in keeping their promises to shareholders and Wall Street? THAT'S what's calling the shots here.

Look at the delays to the PS3 as an example. SONY doesn't care that they're late. They probably knew a year ago they would be. The press keeps dedicating column inches to the PS3, and that's what's important.

IT'S BECAUSE YOU STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND THAT IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO WORK LIKE THAT, YOU CAN GET ANOTHER JOB!

Oh, it's that simple, is it? Huh. Walk a mile in my shoes before you tell me how easy it is. I've got more than 10 years of experience in the industry. I've tried to get out. Trust me, punk. It's not that simple. If you want to know why, just ask.

In fact, contrary to your rose-colored view of the labor marketplace, it is often very difficult to move from industry to industry - for ANYONE.

Anyone who says that unions are the best thing that could happen to the gaming industry is someone who hates the gaming industry with a rarely seen passion.

See, this is where you let your personal prejudices get in the way of clear thinking. I never said that unions would be the best thing to happen to the industry. In fact, NOWHERE do I say that they would actually be a good thing. I work in the industry - willingly - and if approached to join a union, I don't know if I would join. Like I said, it's complicated.

And I've worked at jobs where I was part of a union and I agree with you to an extent - sometimes union people can be lazy mofos. Hell, my mom was a teacher and the teachers who were "tenured" were some of the laziest bastards in the universe. I'm not saying unions are exempt from corruption, or complacency. Because they aren't. Hell, for a few years I was a Teamster. I know unions pretty well.

Or someone who's totally clueless as to how the free market works.

You're completely clueless about the last 200 years of the history of industry.

Let me ask you this...do you have weekends off? Do you work 40 hours a week? Do you have health insurance? Do you often scratch your thick head and wonder where those things came from? Or do you assume like most arrogant Western fools that they were birthrights? Well, they came from UNIONS. Long ago in the bowels of history, people worked 12 hour days, with no breaks, seven days a week. Hell, in many parts of the world, that's still the case. How did people rise up out of that quagmire? By organizing. Unions brought us the 40 hour work week. Unions brought us the weekend. Unions demanded that employers pay for things like health care, sick leave, overtime.

BTW: if the gaming industry unionizes, then you can be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that companies like EA will start outsurcing like it's going outta fashion.

You're goddamn right they will. Activision will, too, so will SONY, every single one of them. THAT'S the precious, hallowed free market you keep getting on your knees to worship. They'll do what they SHOULD be doing - finding the cheapest way to make their products. And all the unions in the world can't stop them.

FFS, I didn't say unions were the RIGHT thing, or even appropriate for the game industry. All I said was that a) conditions are getting worse, and b) the main reason why is because the workers do not have the collective bargaining power that unions would give them. That's all.

It's a complex issue. It's not as simple as a bunch of workers toiling away while management lords over them. In some cases, the "managers" (Producers, etc.) work ungodly hours, too.

But you can keep beating the anti-union drum just because your Daddy has a few deadbeat workers. If it's so bad that all the rich factory owners have to let deadbeat workers sit on the payroll because of some crappy laws, well - guess what, Mr. Rich Factory Owner? Why don't you and your fat cat friends ORGANIZE. Form a union (oh, wait...they're called "trade groups" when its corporations that unionize, sorry). Lobby your government. Throw some money around. Just quit whining.

People in the ultimate positions of power WHINING about how the world treats them like shit make me sick. People who don't know their history, who don't know the men, women, and children who DIED to give them the life they arrogantly feel entitled to make me sick.

Out of interest, where movie production staff have to work for stupid hours to get a final cut together for release date (usually far more set-in-stone than computer game releases) do they get overtime?

Most movie production staff are paid hourly rates.

Wanna know the biggest difference between the film and TV industries and the game industry?

UNIONS.

Yep. That nasty little word. Unions.

Every SINGLE trade in Hollywood has a union - electrical workers, makeup artists, writers, directors, actors.

So, if you're a lighting tech on a movie shoot, you get an hourly rate for a day's work. That hourly rate was negotiated between your union and the studios. You get paid a rate for a "day" of work, which is often defined as 8 hours, but sometimes 10 hours. If the shoot goes over, you immediate get an increased rate. Which often increases every 2 hours until it reaches what people in the biz call "Golden Time" - which, in the film world, means that, if you work more than 14 hours in a day, you get paid your average daily rate PER HOUR.

That means that someone who may expect to make $500 for an 8 hour day is suddenly making $7000 a day.

Why? Hollywood has powerful unions who do what they're supposed to do - PROTECT their workers against unfair working conditions by making it financially burdensome to conduct business in such an exploitative way.

That's what the game industry lacks. Unions. Workers in the game industry lack the collective bargaining power that unions allow.

There are a lot of more complex issues at play, too, but by and large, the game industry will still be a slave industry until it unionizes, or it succeeds in fully outsourcing to third world countries (something that is slowly happening), putting out all but the self-funded developers out of business.

Oh, and people who generalize about the stereotypical clueless executive who tells a reporter a release date that the developer then gets held to - that rarely happens. In the game industry - honestly - publishers don't give a rat's ass about the press. The press are in the pocket of publishers. The press fall over themselves competing with each other for exclusives and "first looks" and agree to release lukewarm, non-confrontational "previews" that people read, and by the time the reviews come out, a lot of the games are already sold, and gamers find out too late that the game sucks. And they never learn that the Gamespy preview or CGW "worldwide exclusive first look" cover story is just a puff piece written by a guy who sat in a room while an Associate Producer walking him through a highly controlled demo of the game, highlighting the good stuff and hiding the bad stuff. Most publishers are wise enough now not to blab dates to the press.

The tight deadlines are mandated by publicly-owned and publicly-traded companies who need to show steady revenue growth to keep their stock prices up. It's that simple. A lot of developers will straight up LIE to publishers about release dates to keep their jobs. Some will make honest mistakes and miscalculate - after all, game creation is not an exact science. It's a thousand times easier to make a film than it is a movie.

The reason why WE - the workers in the game industry - are exploited, why we have to work 80 weeks for months at a time, why we lose wives and girlfriends who get fed up with being home alone, why we only see our kids for 2 hours a week, is because we lack the collective bargaining power to tell publishers that it is unacceptable to work us like this.

Publishers don't care. They really don't. They would outsource game development to third world countries if they could find the teams to do it. I guarantee you the first Indian gaming company that pops up in Bangalore will have every major publisher beating down their door. Publishers outsource art to China and Korea all the time.